


Existential Travel Guides

by cosmogyral



Category: National Treasure Series
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-20
Updated: 2008-12-20
Packaged: 2018-01-25 07:14:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1638398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmogyral/pseuds/cosmogyral
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Or: Several Ways Benjamin Gates Failed At Having Another Dramatic Adventure, And One Possible, Partial Success. Ben/Ian, post-Book of Secrets.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Existential Travel Guides

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks go to my Yuletide filter and the American Indian Languages Page along with a ton of other resources on the Lumbee, almost none of which I ended up using. While just about everything else in this story is an utter lie, the history of the Lumbee is as factual as I could make it. I apologize sincerely if I missed.  
> Thanks and blame to McSweeney's, also, for the title.
> 
> Written for Niki

 

 

"I think this is an important discovery," Ben says. "No, hear me out, put the phone down. I think this -- _don't_ call the police!"

"Who's calling the police?" his father demands. "I'm calling the mental hospital. It is long past time you ought to be locked up."

"This is _big_ ," Ben says. "It could be profitable, but it's just, Mel Gibson made a whole movie about this man and the world should know that he performed this act of heroism."

"Which act of heroism, exactly?"

"You're going to love this." Ben clears his throat. "You know the Roanoke colony. The lost colony."

"...You _found the lost colony?_ "

"I found -- I found his clues to where he hid the genealogical proof that the colony isn't lost," Ben admits. Well, it doesn't sound quite as ideal. But-- "He's very clear about it! In his memoirs--"

"His 'memoirs' are the three rolled up pieces of paper you found in Grant's Tomb!" his father says. "They remodeled Grant's Tomb five years ago! How could they have stayed there all this time?"

"Ulysses S Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman had a very nearly--" Ben breaks off the explanation to grab his dad's phone before he can figure out how to work it.

"And when you told Riley about this," his father says, "exactly how long did it take him to call you crazy?"

Riley _had_ called him crazy. Ben had pointed out to Riley that, previously, they had stolen the Declaration of Independence and kidnapped the President. Riley had responded that those ideas were also, equally, crazy, that they were lucky that they had not gone to prison, that the only reason Riley had agreed to either of those had been because they were protecting their country and their life from crazy people, which category, hello, _hello_ , included the same crazy guy Ben was trying to break out of the federal pen that Ben was going to spend the rest of his life in if he did not drop this idea immediately. Riley had also thrown three or four copies of his book at Ben's head.

Ben shrugs. "He had a couple of objections."

"I can't imagine how he could object to stealing a top secret object from the Smithsonian," his father agrees, dangerously calm. "It would just be unreasonable."

"Fine. If you won't help me, I will do this myself." Ben folds his arms. "I do know other people than my _senile father._ "

~

Ben really doesn't know other people than his senile father.

~

"Ben," his mother says, very patiently, "you can't just hang around in my office."

"I can't come see my mother? And bring her a rare, possibly immensely valuable artifact for her birthday?"

"It's in January." His mother takes the pages, sees the name, and immediately tries not to look excited. "Francis Marion? The Swamp Fox? Ben, this is a marvel!"

Ben knows it's a marvel. Ben knew it was a marvel when he scaled Grant's Tomb and pried off six roof panels in the dead of night to uncover the secret chamber that even now the Grant family had been holding in reserve according to the wishes of William T. Sherman, who thought the document was villainous and treasonous and probably a forgery, which was no reason to throw it away. Hanging upside down from the ceiling in pitch black, clutching the pages to his chest, he'd thought: _this is a marvel._

Of course, the next thing he'd thought was, _If Ian were here, at least he could cut the rope and let me down._

"If you hadn't broken up with Abigail," his mother says, mildly, "she could give you a good provenance legally, you know. Just because your father and I are speaking again doesn't give you license to intrude on all of my personal time." She gives him a long look. "Why did you and Abigail...?"

"Fine," Ben says, scowling. "You really want to know? I slept with Riley."

His mother sighs. "If you don't want to tell me, Ben, please don't just make things up."

~

"Will you at least admit," his mother says, brushing off the diary page, "that when I told you in third grade that you should make some friends, sweetie--"

"I'm still in touch with Peter!"

"Mm? What's Peter doing now?"

"He's, uh -- he's working. You know. Nose to the grindstone."

"Very good." His mother busies herself with an ascender. "At McMurdo."

"Yeah, what is that, a paper company?"

"It's the US naval base in Antarctica." She hands it back to him, clean and legible, and smiles. "Here you go, dear."

"Mom," Ben says, "if I ever told you I loved you as a child--"

"Oh, you didn't," she murmurs at her desk. "As I recall you told me that it would be worth incalculable risk to find me fourscore and seven years ago, but that was just the one time. Ben, you really must learn not to make these speeches to the British."

~

It's just that, he thought people would be _pleased_ to help him do this. In his wildest fantasies, he had maintained hopes that once he had found the next clue, once he knew that what he was looking for was a hint to where Roanoke had disappeared to and what Croatan really meant, that he wouldn't get a lot of people telling him that he could look it up on Snopes.com.

He couldn't look it up on Snopes.com. Riley had done computer things to his machine and now he couldn't access the site. It wasn't his fault he'd told Riley to watch out for the larva lily, that had been a perfectly reasonable precaution.

It made _sense_ \-- Marion on the battlefield, a secret assignment, a horrified meeting with a tribal leader, perfect English and a grudge. The Roanoke descendants saying, "What can you do to help us?" Conceal the tribe as free blacks and Tuscarora -- short-term at first but getting longer-term because the people Marion had trusted with his secret couldn't be trusted at all, helped by a healthy hand in the Underground Railroad, and now, the Lumbee, their descendants, classified as "Indians...possibly," no rez, no rights. It was artistic. Snopes.com didn't deal in artistic. Snopes.com didn't even have Thomas Gates' assassination attempt marked as False. It was under Undetermined. That was what Ben called 'offensive' and 'personally hurtful.' He was doing just fine on his own.

~

"Ben," Ian says. "What a pleasant surprise."

Maximum-security prison is even more depressing and concrete-based than normal prison, which Ben knows from one of Ian's worse ideas, which Ian had of course tried to blame him for at the time. For lack of anything better to say, Ben says, "Hello."

They assess each other for a long time. If Ben's changed, he's reverted, but Ian has become gaunt and when he opens his hand Ben can see a tattoo on the web of his finger -- he can't help it, he asks, "Russian? Doesn't that mean you're a, what's the word--"

Ian snorts. "No. It just saves questions."

"Do you have the--" Ben gestures at his knees, then thinks better of it. "Listen, Ian, I need your help."

"You need _my_ help," Ian says. "You. Out of prison. Put _me_ in prison. For trying to kill you. Need my help."

"I wish we'd extradited you," Ben says, with real passion, and passes him an ordinary-looking replica of the Constitution. Nothing up his sleeve.

~

When it comes down to it, it's pretty easy breaking Ian out of jail. It involves waiting for visiting hours, then sending in a small child with a winsome expression to give his uncle a piece of candy with a microchip which Riley has encoded with ... computer things ... and then ... look, it's pretty easy, whatever Ian says about it being ridiculously convoluted when he meets Ben at the entrance, officially a man on a weekend furlough and unofficially on the lam. That's not exactly how he phrases it, mind you; he phrases it, "I think I'd rather just have stayed in jail."

"It's nice to see you too, sunshine," Ben says. "Let's go rob the Smithsonian."

~

"The Amber Room," Ben explains to Riley, "was the most elaborate amber sculpture in the history of the world, built in the walls of the tsar's palace to showcase Russian splendor. But during the war it went missing. Recently most of it turned up."

"But not all," Ian says, lifting the piece free from its magnetic casing. "Not this."

Ben brings his hand up to touch the little eagle in the corner; Ian's gloves are his reflection through the piece. "The most valuable piece of tree sap in the world."

"Wow," says Riley, and then adds hurriedly "Except for the one in Jurassic Park, right?"

"Dinosaurs can't tell us what happened to the Roanoke colony." Ben takes hold of it, examines the thin groove that runs through it. He looks at Riley. "You ready?"

" _Not ready,_ " Riley yelps. "You can't just break it!"

"I'm not breaking it," says Ben, as the amber gives way with a crack. "I'm fixing it." And he slides the pieces together into a triangle, thin enough that the light shines clear through the sides, reflecting shadows that -- those are letters, those _really are_ letters and numbers, projected spidery on the opposite wall like the ghost of a map.

"He still talks like that?" says Ian, in a whisper that is not at all as 'stage' as he thinks it is. "Send me back to the pen."

~

It's in Cyrillic.

At one point in Reykjavik, looking for someone who could tell them something that might lead them to the Charlotte, Ben had found out that Ian spoke Russian remarkably well for a Brit. The thing was, he spoke it with a Russian accent. When that night they drank their way through the entire minibar Ben had asked Ian very seriously to see his knees, so there'd be no mobster nonsense.

A lot of sex had ensued, but in the dark Ian's knees could've been covered with roses for all Ben could see. It hadn't come up again.

It's come up now in the way that Ian, looking almost embarrassed, works out the cipher on his own.

For the first time Ben thinks, _He was a con man long before he met me._ He thinks, _That's certainly not attractive in any fashion, and besides, I have to return him to prison in a couple of weeks._

He wonders where he could lose the receipt.

~

It turns out that Francis Marion meant a cave on Lumbee land, sealed in by time and a complex locking mechanism probably built by the same Russian architect as made the amber, the showoff. It's labeled CROATAN in clear letters, after all. It's too bad the letters are ten feet underground. Riley lowers himself into the sinkhole first, possibly to wake up the entire colony of bats, which then express their anger all over his clothes.

"You know Marion probably didn't care about killing Indians," Ian says, watching Riley try to fend them off with his flashlight.

"He would've cared if he thought he was killing the English," Ben says. "If nothing else, he _was_ a patriot."

Inside the chamber there are no bodies -- no grave to disturb, which makes it easier -- but there's years of genealogy, unfakeable, unmistakable. There's a clear panel to match the amber sheet; it slots in and the room lights up with a crackle of static electricity before grinding back. There are years of personal effects here. Dolls. Baskets -- Ben reaches out to touch one before remembering that he shouldn't disturb the scene.

"There's no gold," Ian says, looking at the array of personal items, the well-sealed records, the small shoes. "There is no gold in this room."

"Do you know what this means?" Ben says, breathless. "This is going to prove that the Lumbee are the Croatan. This is going to prove that the Roanoke Colony was never lost, Ian. It's been right here this whole--"

"You _fucker_ ," says Ian, and launches himself bodily in Ben's direction. "You broke me out of jail for this!"

"But the _little shoes_ ," says Ben, right before he hits his head on a rock.

~

They don't take the credit, although it causes Riley physical pain to walk away from his handiwork. They leave a tip for the tribal authorities with stunningly complete directions, and since no one is chasing them down to kill them but the feds, they don't even have to leave it in code. But they write it with gloves on.

Ian stays several paces behind them, watching Ben warily for signs of concussion-induced violence. Ben isn't sure if he's screwing with them or not. It's hard to tell when the whole world is swimming. He can't figure out why Ian won't leave, but even before the head trauma and well before the attempted murders Ben had trouble with that concept, with the reason Ian didn't just get up and go the first time Ben won his pants off him in a poker game.

Maybe it was because Ian had thought Ben meant 'pants' and not 'trousers,' and had never wanted to admit his mistake. God save the Queen.

The motel (even with its new and exciting flashing lights display, for descendants of Thomas Gates and conquering heroes only) is cheap, which is the important thing. The nice Lumbee man behind the desk offers to give them half-off because it's the Fourth of July; Ben wonders if this is some terrible sick joke, or if he's really missed America's Christmas. They still pay for only two rooms. Riley, covered with mud and years of guano, elects to take the room with the shower.

"God save the Queen," Ben tells Ian, having lain down on the bed. "Also, pip pip."

"Ah, yeah, do your Dick Van Dyke impression and get it done with," Ian says, pulling off Ben's boots to chuck one of them at the wall next to his head.

This is just not being a good day for Ben's head in general. He likes it, he doesn't understand why people keep throwing things at it. Including in Ian's case, memorably, his own head. Although that had turned out all right.

He opens his mouth to tell Ian this, that it would be all right if Ian decided to reprise Reykjavik, but he passes out instead.

~

When he wakes up it's dark. He opens his mouth. "Ian," he says.

"No," says Ian, rolling over. "No, no, no."

"You don't even know what I was going to say!"

"Ben, I've worked with you for years--"

Ben examines him grouchily. "One of which you spent in prison--"

"--And thousands of your tirades. I could toss this off in my sleep."

"Okay, then. Go on. You're half-asleep anyway."

"Whenever you want me to do one of your disasters you start out by quoting the Declaration of Independence. You'll -- _pursuing happiness_. Then you say 'what our great nation was founded on' and then you quote the _current_ president, and then I say, I'm British, and for the love of god, this is a terrible idea--" Ian's grin is invisible, but perfectly audible. "Then you try to make me a deal."

"Then you shoot me," says Ben, sourly, who had been planning to call Ian the greatest treasure of all.

"So make me a deal," Ian says, his fingers brushing up against Ben's side in the dark.

Ben considers this for some time. "Okay," he says. "Listen, Ian. If you stay for a couple of nights, see what happens, I promise I won't turn you into the federal police."

"Fine," says Ian, who is already mostly asleep, and Ben dreams of years of happy and successful blackmail, and then, more realistically, of winning several state lotteries, but when he wakes up he does so because Ian has decided unprompted that what Ben needs in the morning is a blowjob, so maybe, just maybe, in between surviving Ian's murder attempts, he'll get to pursue a little happiness after all.

 


End file.
